Fleet
Admiral Chester William Nimitz led the Allied naval forces to victory in
the Pacific in World War II. He was born February 24, 1885, in Fredericksburg,
Texas to Anna (Henke) Nimitz. He died on February 20, 1966, of complications
following a stroke.

Nimitz's father, Chester
Bernard Nimitz, did not live to see his son born. His grandfather became
his surrogate father, influencing his character and values during his early
years. Charles H. Nimitz was a German immigrant, former seaman, and owner
of the Nimitz Hotel.

Anna married her late
husband's younger brother, William Nimitz, in 1890. He was manager of the
St. Charles Hotel in Kerrville. Chester eventually became chief handyman
at the hotel. To get a college education he decided to get an appointment
to the United States Military Academy. No appointment was available, however.
He then applied for the United States Naval Academy. He graduated January
30, 1905, seventh in his class of 114 at Annapolis.

After two years' service
on the U.S.S. Ohio, he was commissioned an ensign. His first command
was aboard the Spanish gunboat Panay in the Philippines. Later transfered
to the destroyer Decatur, he ran the ship aground. As a result,
he was court-martialed and reprimanded. He was also denied the battleship
duty he wanted, and was ordered to serve on a submarine instead. Four consecutive
submarine commands, however, would give him invaluable experience in the
coming world wars.

Nimitz married Catherine
Vance Freeman in 1913. They would have three daughters and a son. The newlyweds
soon went to Europe so Chester could learn about diesel engines in Germany
and Belgium. After returning to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he supervised the
building and installation of the first diesel engine to power a United
States Navy vessel.

With the coming of
the First World War, he was given the rank of commander, and served as
chief of staff to Admiral Samuel S. Robison, commander of the Atlantic
Submarine Force. Soon thereafter, Nimitz was executive officer of the battleship
South Carolina. He was then sent to Pearl Harbor where he built
the submarine base and commanded the Submarine Division.

After the war, Nimitz
underwent extensive naval command training. A plan he developed in 1922-23
at the Navy War College for a hypothetical Pacific war was the one he eventually
put to use in the Second World War. Then, with Admiral Robison now commander-in-chief
of the United States Fleet, Nimitz returned as his chief of staff.

In 1926, Nimitz developed
a prototype for the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps at the University
of California at Berkeley. His model was widely used. Rising to the rank
of captain in 1929, he left Berkeley to command a submarine division, the
San Diego destroyer base, and the cruiser Augusta, flagship of the
Asiatic Fleet.

He then served in Washington
as assistant chief of the navy Bureau of Navigation. Following promotion
to rear admiral, he commanded a cruiser division. That was followed by
command of a battleship division. In 1939 he returned to Washington as
chief of the Bureau of Navigation. It was during his service there that
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. In need of a scapegoat for the disaster,
the Navy relieved Admiral Husband E. Kimmel as commander-in-chief of the
Pacific Fleet. Nimitz became his replacement at Pearl Harbor on December
25, 1941.

Avoiding the political
finger pointing over the Pearl Harbor disaster, Fleet Admiral Nimitz concentrated
on positives such as the fact that the Pearl Harbor submarine base was
spared, and the aircraft carriers survived the attack by going to sea.
It was with such unwarranted optimism that Nimitz directed the early morale-boosting
victories of James Doolittle's carrier-based raid on Japan, and the battles
in the Coral Sea and at Midway Island.

Fifty-three years after
the battle of Midway, Nimitz's leadership ability was reaffirmed by a new
discovery. The family of Vice Admiral Stanhope Cotton Ring discovered a
handwritten, twenty-two-page letter by Ring dated March 28, 1946. It had
been locked away in his sea chest. In it was Ring's previously unknown
account of the loss of twenty-seven aircraft from the sixty-plane squadron
he led into battle in the early hours at Midway. Historians had falsely
speculated all those years that the planes simply got lost, costing greater
U.S. losses than necessary. According to Ring's letter, however, communications
problems caused the planes to ignore a changed homing signal, forcing them
to rely on dead reckoning to return to the carrier Hornet. Ring's analysis,
that failed communication and an inexperienced crew caused the planes to
run out of fuel and ditch at sea, corroborated the evaluation Nimitz gave
in his official report of the battle.

As the war unfolded,
Nimitz became commander-in-chief of Pacific Ocean Areas, while keeping
his Pacific Fleet command. That promotion gave him command of the whole
Pacific theater except for General Douglas MacArthur's section of the Southwest
Pacific and the inactive southeast. After their unconditional surrender,
Nimitz signed the peace treaty with Japan aboard the battleship Missouri
in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. He was awarded the army and navy Distinguished
Service medals and many foreign decorations.

On December 15, 1945,
Nimitz was named commander-in-chief of the United States Fleet, a position
he held for the next two years. In somewhat of an unofficial retirement,
he was assigned unspecified duty by the Secretary of the Navy. He was a
roving ambassador for the United Nations and a regent of the University
of California. President Truman appointed him chairman of the Presidential
Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights.

Admiral Nimitz suffered
a severe fall in 1963 and he and his wife moved from Berkeley to naval
quarters on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. In January 1966 he had
a stroke. His recovery was complicated by pneumonia, however, and he died
on February 20, 1966. He is buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery, San
Bruno, California.

The Fleet Admiral Chester
W. Nimitz Memorial Naval Museum opened in 1964 at the Nimitz Hotel in Fredericksburg.
It is now the Admiral Nimitz State Historical Park, and contains many displays
devoted to the Second World War.